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Render
Render (v.tr.): to submit, as for consideration; to give or make available; to give what is due or owed; to give in return, or retribution; to surrender; to yield. To represent; to perform an interpretation of; to arrange. To express in another language or form; to translate. To deliver or pronounce formally; to cause to become; to reduce, convert, or melt down, by heating.
br> A recovery narrative has a known what it was like, what happened, and what it’s like today. In a poem, what can be arranged or interpreted with such certainty, by whom, and to what end? What is the relationship of the performance of recovery via a poem to the truth of the experience? Does one deliver the other? Insert into these considerations the experience of traumas. How is trauma converted by post-trauma experiences? What is the retribution of that experience when articulated as poetry? Enter these questions through the dream, with its unrenderable subjects, landscapes, and plots. Where do dreams meet poetry in their spontaneous, opaque, necessary structures? What do such comparisons yield to the waking reader? What can be rendered intelligible in the soup of long-term recovery?br> br> With great ferocity and tenderness, Sachiko Murakami’s poems encounter such questions, and then melt them down, by heating.
br> A recovery narrative has a known what it was like, what happened, and what it’s like today. In a poem, what can be arranged or interpreted with such certainty, by whom, and to what end? What is the relationship of the performance of recovery via a poem to the truth of the experience? Does one deliver the other? Insert into these considerations the experience of traumas. How is trauma converted by post-trauma experiences? What is the retribution of that experience when articulated as poetry? Enter these questions through the dream, with its unrenderable subjects, landscapes, and plots. Where do dreams meet poetry in their spontaneous, opaque, necessary structures? What do such comparisons yield to the waking reader? What can be rendered intelligible in the soup of long-term recovery?br> br> With great ferocity and tenderness, Sachiko Murakami’s poems encounter such questions, and then melt them down, by heating.
- GenresPoetryCanadaContemporary
112 pages, Paperback
First published September 29, 2020
2 people are currently reading
92 people want to read
About the author
Sachiko Murakami
24 books22 followersSachiko Murakami is the author of the poetry collections Render (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020), Get Me Out Of Here (Talonbooks 2015), Rebuild (Talonbooks, 2011), and
The Invisibility Exhibit (Talonbooks, 2008), a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award.
Murakami has been a literary worker for numerous presses, journals, and organizations. She currently lives in Toronto.
The Invisibility Exhibit (Talonbooks, 2008), a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award.
Murakami has been a literary worker for numerous presses, journals, and organizations. She currently lives in Toronto.
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 7, 2022
Addiction and recovery, healing.
"Death smirks.
You really ought to cool it with the drugs.
Then slips out the door."
"Death smirks.
You really ought to cool it with the drugs.
Then slips out the door."
July 26, 2020
In Render, Sachiko Murakami has created a moving collection of intimate and heart-rending poems with imagery and language that is visceral, close-to-the-bone, questioning, apologetic and direct, tackling difficult subjects and experiences with eyes open. Through subtle shifts between memories and dreams, history and story, she continues a body of work that is outward looking as well as inward looking as a way to rebuild, reach out and move forward.
I'm doing an interview with Sachiko in August on my podcast, the Small Machine Talks. Stay tuned for info on date. http://smallmachinetalks.com/
I'm doing an interview with Sachiko in August on my podcast, the Small Machine Talks. Stay tuned for info on date. http://smallmachinetalks.com/
November 6, 2020
I've read this book twice, once in the comfort of my own home, the second time in an examination room at the dermatologists, waiting for the surgeon to arrive and remove what the doctor referred to as the best kind of cancer.
Both times the distilled nature of the book, the poets gift with words and her tone impressed me. Both times I connected with individual poems on a deep level, but the book as a whole really connected with me - particularly the first half - in the uncomfortable space of the office, mask on, fingers trying not to touch the face.
The language is so finally tuned and yet the nature of addiction is a wild tugging, an unpredictably not of desire but of location and behaviour, and that tension really came through in the second read through.
An extraordinary book.
Both times the distilled nature of the book, the poets gift with words and her tone impressed me. Both times I connected with individual poems on a deep level, but the book as a whole really connected with me - particularly the first half - in the uncomfortable space of the office, mask on, fingers trying not to touch the face.
The language is so finally tuned and yet the nature of addiction is a wild tugging, an unpredictably not of desire but of location and behaviour, and that tension really came through in the second read through.
An extraordinary book.
August 3, 2020
The most striking element of this book is the structure. I was never quite sure when and where Murakami would end a poem/thought or keep it bleeding through the next page. This meandering form lends an organic quality to the poems, that makes them cut that much closer to the bone.
January 2, 2021
REVIEW FORTHCOMING
November 14, 2021
Really could not even connect to the poems - either in subject or style
September 21, 2023
Very mediocre, with some good verses sprinkled in between however the overall pieces are very boring and unmoving.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews